We just got off of the phone with the Dodge County Courthouse. Randy Demmer was the defendant in a sexual harassment lawsuit that we were told was brought by two former employees of his a little more than ten years ago.
It appears the former employees brought suit in federal and state court. The federal suit was dismissed and the state claim was settled out of court.
From what we understand, the suit contained some very troubling allegations about Demmer’s business. This story is developing and we’ll have (much) more on it.
UPDATE: I’m told the Rochester Post Bulletin is working on a story about this suit.
UPDATE x2 (Matt adds): Randy Demmer’s campaign sent us a letter that they released yesterday addressing this lawsuit. I am in no position to pass any judgment on this matter and my personal thoughts on the merits of this suit are neither clarified by this letter nor my preliminary reading of the court records. This is going to take a bit longer to fully digest…
I’ve uploaded the letter here (warning, it’s a pdf).
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This is the type of crap you get when a candidate hires a guy like Brad Biers to be his campaign manager. To me, this type of politics says more about the judgement of one of Demmer’s opponents than it does about Demmer.
“To me, this type of politics says more about the judgement of one of Demmer’s opponents than it does about Demmer.”
WTF are you on about? Demmer’s being sued for sexual harassment. This has nothing to do with his opponents.
Randy Demmer was sued.
He is not being sued. Sean
One way or another, Demmer could be vacating his House seat. Demmer’s seat is winnable for the DFL. It will be an uphill climb, but the district is simular to Any Welti’s district. In fact, Klobachar performed better in Demmer’s district then in Welti’s.
Add this to the list of seats the GOP will have to defend this fall.
Apparently the suit involves Demmer’s NAPA parts stores. For several decades NAPA used soft porn to advertise it’s stores. The porn included a regular glossy mail piece titled “Parts Pups”. It was the local NAPA dealers decision whether to send out this porn and the local dealer decided who was on the mailing list. These mailings were so offensive that many customers quit doing business with NAPA and some NAPA dealers refused to participate in the mailings. So Demmer was responsible for this promotional porn and could have put a stop to it in the stores he controlled.
The “Parts Pups” and other pornographic promotions set the tone for how women employees and customers would be treated at NAPA. I pulled my business with NAPA, as did many government agencies and private companies. NAPA finally got the hint and their pornographic promotions have ceased, and I’m a NAPA customer again. Unfortunately Randy Demmer like many of his republican buddies still hasn’t gotten the hint.
Thanks, Dyna. That is valuable info.
It makes a difference to me that the issue was with the NAPA stores marketing material vs. Demmer having done or said harrassing thing himself, directly to employees.
Still, he could have prevented the whole thing with a couple better decisions, but it isn’t like he was groping female employees back in the parts room.
When I first read the post, it said that “Demmer deserves his fair day in court” which gave the impression that he was currently being sued.
Recognizing your error, I’m glad you removed that language from the post.
Come on, “Exclusive: Randy Demmer Sued”? Please.
How about a slighty more fair statement, such as
“Exclusive: Women Harass Demmer in Court for 4 years, charges against him and his company dismised SIX times.”
EEOC and MN human rights department routinely “dismiss” over 90% of complaints. That doesn’t mean the complaints are false, just that the agenies aren’t going to put there limited resources into them.
Wow, MN Publius sure got burned by another liberal blogger. Bluestem Prairie writes:
“We had known about the lawsuits — a federal case filed in 1995 but dismissed before it was re-refiled in the Dodge County Courts in 1996. It’s old stuff and not material that makes Demmer look like a monster. He isn’t.”
Thank god it wasn’t Snap On Tools.
Wow — that’s taking the post at Bluestem completely out of context; As Mr. Brodkorb fully well knows — my post discusses why those circulating the Demmer lawsuit material are probably Demmer’s political adversaries within the Republican party.
As the MnPublius post above notes, Representative Demmer released his letter yesterday. This morning’s Rochester Post Bulletin provides a good discussion of the way the material was spread.
“A couple weeks ago, state Rep. Randy Demmer received an ominous call. It was a warning, delivered through an intermediary from Washington, D.C.: Drop your candidacy for U.S. Congress or information about a sexual harassment lawsuit settled a decade ago would be dredged up to damage your campaign.”
“On Tuesday, Demmer, a three-term state representative from Hayfield, decided to deal preemptively with the threat by going public, telling his story to the Post-Bulletin. He also has sent out hundreds of letters to the delegates and alternates who will endorse a Republican candidate to run against 1st District Rep. Tim Walz.”
“On Monday, the Post-Bulletin received an anonymous telephone tip with information about the sexual harassment suit filed in U.S. District Court against Demmer, the three NAPA Auto Parts stores he then owned and a store manager in 1995. The paper also received an anonymous e-mail on the subject.”
Sounds like an internal Republican battle. Look closer to home, Mr. Brodkorb.
As Demmer himself said in the other article at the PB:
Demmer said he suspects the effort originates in Republican circles, because he’s not even the endorsed candidate to oppose Democrat Walz yet. He said he received a call from a Republican in Washington, an apparent ally, who had received a package….
Take that Mikey!!!
You should know better than to take on Ollie Ox!!!
Credibility is at play here and the Ox has that!!
This is a really sad story. According to the Rochester Post-Bulletin, Representative Randy Demmer received a threating phone call instructing him to end his campaign for Congress, or damaging information would be released against him.
Since Demmer didn’t end his campaign for Congresss, the “damaging” information that was threatened to be used against him found a welcomed home on the liberal blog MN Publius, as they published it earlier this morning in an “exclusive” post that was first teased last evening.
Even after being hand-feed the story, MN Publius still got it wrong. In an earlier version of their “exclusive” post, MN Publius claimed that Demmer was currently being sued when in fact, this matter had been resolved over ten years ago.
I’m not taking a side in the GOP battle to replace Congressman Walz. But I will take a stand against liberal bloggers who publish material used to threaten and intimidate people to end their campaigns. The bloggers behind MN Publius should be embarrassed for unknowingly being associated with the threats against a legislator.
lojasmo,
WTF Genius. I’ll give you one guess who the anonymous source is and I’ll bet you it goes directly to the Davis campaign.
Such a sad story! And I’m out of Kleenex . . .
So, what we are saying here is that while it was probably an (R) challenger that threatneded to leak it, it was acutally a Liberal Democrat Blogger that gave it the light of day.
So, who has the greater responsibility here?
MO,
In all honesty, the Republican challenger (to be clear, likely the Davis campaign) has the greater responsibility. However, MNPublius was a little sloppy (sorry guys) in their original headline which made the lawsuit seem to be current instead of something that happened ten years ago. Also, this site seemed to trump it up big in the morning and then have to deflate the scoop by evening based on the information that came out. I’m not saying that bloggers should be held to journalistic standards, but the original headline and story was misleading.